Review of Convenience Store Woman

Sayaka Murata’s novel Convenience Store Woman is just 176 pages long, so it is a book that I was able to read in one uninterrupted session. It is an odd book that, in some ways, reminds me of another short odd book, Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s The Bathroom. Toussaint’s book is about a man trying to live his life without leaving the bathroom. Murata’s book tells the story of Keiko Furukura, a thirty-six year old woman who has spent the last eighteen years of her life working at a convenience store named Smile Mart. I like the name.

At the end of the story, while shopping at another convenience store, Kieko finds herself acting like she worked there:

I was wasting time talking like this. I had to get myself back in shape for the sake of the store. I had to restructure my body so it would be able to move more swiftly and precisely to replenish the refrigerated drinks or clean the floor, to more perfectly comply with the store’s demands.

... I took my cell phone out of my bag. First, I needed to call the company that was interviewing me to tell them I wouldn’t be attending because I was a convenience store worker. And then I had to find a new store to work in.

I caught sight of myself reflected in the window of the convenience store I’d just come out of. My hands, my feet — they existed only for the store! For the first time, I would be thinking of the me in the window as a being with meaning.

Murata’s book contains no difficult vocabulary. And the sentences are short. In fact, not a lot happens in the story. There are only four events that happen in the book:

1. Keiko works in the Smile Mart and is happy because she enjoys this job where she is told exactly what to do.

2. Keiko meets Shiraha, a young man who starts working at Smile Mart. Shiraha is a deeply ironic person who does not like rules and quickly stops working at the store.

3. Keiko lets Shiraha move in and share her tiny apartment. She treats him like a pet and has no romantic connection with him. She is not even friends with him. However, Keiko soon realizes that if she lets people think Shiraha is her boyfriend, then they will stop asking questions about her personal life and, instead, make assumptions on their own. Keiko quits her job after Shiraha suggests that she interview for a professional position in an office.

4. Keiko realizes her source of meaning only comes from working at the convenience store, cancels her interview, and immediately starts work at a different convenience store.

From and early age, Keiko has trouble understanding why she needs to care about societal expectations. As she says, “everyone thought I was a rather strange child.” In a flashback, One day, when she was a little girl, Keiko sees a dead bird in a park. She suggests to her mother that they could grill it and eat it.

My mother was speechless, but I was captivated by the vision of my parents and little sister happily tucking in around the dinner table. My father was always saying how tasty yakitori was, and what was this if not grilled bird? There were lots more there in the park, so all we had to do was catch and take them home. I couldn’t understand why should we bury the bird instead of eating it.

I suppose that Murata is making some sort of statement in this book about the nature of conformity in Japanese society. I will let those who have more experience living in and thinking about Japan ponder that issue. What I do know is that Keiko Furukura is a rather odd person, but the surprisingly pleasant thing about reading Convenience Store Woman, at least for me, is that Keiko is presented as a happy person and it is fun to read about her and her work.